Top tips to make UC a success

UNIFIED Communications has become popular with call centres because it brings together on the desktop technologies such as voice, email and instant messaging (IM).

Using a single intuitive interface with all the information they need, agents can handle an entire call and use IM to gather any extra information from colleagues.

The result: savings in time and cost – more calls are resolved first time – greater flexibility, better staff morale and improved customer satisfaction because there is less likelihood that they will need to talk to multiple agents.

Here are my top tips:

Plan carefully Examine your existing infrastructure, in particular how your employees communicate at present, so that you achieve advanced work flow from the increased volume and quality of communications UC provides. Think about how different people work, how mobile they are and how global your company is.  Ensure all decision makers agree and seek professional advice early to help with planning, deployment and long-term management.

Improving the customer experience Your UC strategy needs to retain and improve the customers’ ability to reach agents and always guarantee seamless and easy communication.

Consider mobility by looking at how many of your people are out and about at meetings, working remotely or just moving around the office or building for a large part of the day.  With wireless and corded communication your employees can be productive wherever they are.

Choose a suitable headset with full wideband capabilities so that employees can enjoy the superior sound quality UC allows.  Our range of Jabra wideband headsets – corded and wireless -- also has noise cancelling and protection against sudden loud noises.  And there are models compatible with both PSTN and UC if you are considering UC for the future.

Install powerful management tools Faults and performance issues need to be addressed quickly so remote monitoring is essential. Reports on exactly how your new system is being used can also help you make future decisions, such as identifying the best and worst communication modes for different situations.

Security New methods of communicating and sharing data can raise security issues so it is important to be aware of the risks. Even though these efficiency enhancing tools can seem exciting, don’t neglect good security measures.

Keep it simple  Bringing together many different voice, data and information networks may, primarily, seem complicated, but if they are easy to use and provide consistently high levels of functionality, then employees and ultimately the customer, will see a huge difference.

Sarah Gray, is marketing director of GN Netcom, makers of Jabra headsets. 
She can be contacted at sgray@gn.com